(1 of )Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green reacts after he was called for a foul against Houston Rockets guard James Harden during the first half of Game 1 of the NBA Western Conference final, Monday, May 14, 2018, in Houston. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

Grant Cohn: What must Warriors improve? List starts at Draymond Green

GRANT COHN

PRESSDEMOCRAT.COM | May 19, 2018

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Steve Kerr should have benched Draymond Green and given his minutes to Kevon Looney. That’s how bad Green played in Game 2 against the Rockets.

Sure, the Warriors won Game 1 in Houston, and Game 2 didn’t really matter. They needed only one road victory. Now, they have home-court advantage. And if they win the three remaining games at Oracle, they win the series. And the Warriors haven’t lost a playoff game at home since Kevin Durant joined the team. Sure.

But, Green was so bad in Game 2, and he was just the beginning of the problems that make the Warriors vulnerable in this series.

These are their five biggest issues.

1. Draymond Green is trying too hard to make an impact.

He needs to embrace his role as a supporting actor against the Rockets. He can’t be the lead like he was against the Pelicans.

The Warriors wouldn’t have beaten the Pelicans without Green. He was the MVP of that series, the focal point of the Warriors offense and defense. He averaged a triple double, and guarded Anthony Davis, the best scoring big man in basketball, and made Davis quit. Punked him.

Green can’t affect the Rockets the same way. He has to stand in a corner and guard a stationary 3-point shooter, or stand under the basket and box out Rockets center Clint Capela, who has no offensive game. Capela’s signature move, such as it is, involves running to the basket and tipping the ball in on a pass from someone else. He never posts up. Doesn’t know how.

“Houston is trying to break you down to either get a layup or a 3, which means there’s a lot more ground to cover, a lot more rotations,” Kerr said Friday after practice. “Draymond is not going to be able to be in the mix as much.”

And he can’t stand it. He kept wandering to the middle of the floor, into the spotlight, when he should have been standing in a corner on defense in Game 2. He forced his teammates to cover for him being out of position. And they gave up eight corner 3s.

The Rockets aren’t guarding Green on offense. He is shooting only 30 percent from the field, and he hasn’t made a 3 in this series. He’s passing up open shots and layups, hunting for assists and forcing passes. He leads the team with 3.5 turnovers per game. He committed four turnovers in the first half of Game 2. That’s a big reason the Warriors lost.

The Rockers will win this series if Green keeps doing too much and — sports cliché here — loses his focus.

2. Kevin Durant’s offense.

The Warriors haven’t run the offense through Stephen Curry since he returned recently from a six-week knee injury. They have run the offense through Durant. And he is shooting 55.1 percent from the field, 46.2 percent from behind the 3-point line and averaging 37.5 points against the Rockets. Efficient.

The rest of the Warriors are shooting 46.6 percent from the field and 32 percent on 3s. Durant isn’t making them better. He has one assist and six turnovers in two games. He’s turning the Warriors offense into the Rockets offense in Game 1 — four players watching one player do all the work.

Green’s mom, Mary Babers, tweeted about Durant’s style of offense during Game 2. “It left everyone else standing around never to get into position,” she wrote. “SWING THE BALL. Pass the ball & around the 7 second mark take the shot (not at the 21 second mark). ISO ISO ISO! They beat us at our own game!”

She’s right. The Warriors have to change their offense to win this series, make it a team game, not a Durant game.

Ariza shot 7 of 9 and had 19 points in Game 2, while Curry shot 7 of 19 and had 16 points. Ariza won the matchup. Curry couldn’t guard him. He can’t guard any of the Rockets. He looks like a little kid trying to chase around grown men.

Curry usually is so great on offense, his subpar defense doesn’t matter. But he’s averaging only 17 points per game in this series, and shooting 15.4 percent on 3s. He hasn’t made an impact scoring.

And his defense has been worse than usual. The Rockets are attacking him every chance they get and blowing by him, forcing the Warriors defense to collapse to help Curry. The result? The Warriors are conceding open 3-pointers.

Curry needs to start scoring, because his defense will be a problem all series. He’s a mark. Or is the right word victim?

4. The bench.

The Warriors have seven players who can play center on their roster, but only two of them can play in this series — Green and Looney. The others are useless.

Despite this fact, Kerr keeps giving playing time to 37-year-old David West, a liability defending the 3-point line and the fast break. He’s slow and he’s killing the defense. In Game 2, the Warriors got outscored by six points during the six minutes West played.

They can’t afford to give him more minutes. The Warriors are down to three viable bench players — Looney, Shaun Livingston and Nick Young. The rest of the bench should be spectators.

5. The small starting lineup.

In the past, Kerr would wait until mid-series to make Andre Iguodala a starter and play without a true center. To go small. Iguodala was Kerr’s trump card, the final adjustment that made the Warriors unbeatable.

Kerr went small right away in this series, started Iguodala from the onset.

Iguodala is 34, and seems tired. His plus-minus for the series is a team-low minus-22, meaning the Rockets have outscored the Warriors by 22 points when Iguodala has been on the floor. In Game 2, the Warriors starting lineup got outscored by 17 points, and their defensive rating was 137.9. Awful.

On offense, Iguodala has hit zero 3-pointers. Same for Green. Those two make up 40 percent of the Warriors small lineup.

The Rockets’ small lineup, which consists of Chris Paul, James Harden, Eric Gordon, Trevor Ariza and P.J. Tucker, has made 27 3s in two games, and all five players have made at least two 3s. They all shoot well.

“You want to go small?” Tucker told USA Today’s Sam Amick after Game 2. “All right, fine. We’ll go small, too. Our small lineup is the best in the league.”

The Warriors should go big and start Looney and bench Iguodala. They need to make major adjustments. Kerr should know this. Does he?

Grant Cohn covers the 49ers for The Santa Rosa Press Democrat and Pressdemocrat.com. You can reach him at grantcohn@gmail.com.